Before you read this, picture in your head (or glance across the room) at a favorite piece of furniture in your house.  Can you imagine that room without it?  Has it become something so familiar and cozy to you that you just quietly appreciate it but hardly notice it anymore?  Are there people in your life who fit that description too?  Join me in exploring the idea of people as furniture and a couple ways to explore that metaphor.

Our world needs peace.  Where can we find it?  Perhaps the best answer is it starts with us, not outside of us.  Read on to find out how you can bring ripples of calming influence into the circles where you tread.

Finding ways to reach out and extend peace to those around us does not feel like something that comes naturally to us anymore.  How can we regain the positive interactions that we have with our neighbors, our community, and those around us?  Read on to find some suggestions about putting this idea of passing the peace into practice.

All of us have things that trigger us and that can rub us the wrong way.  Can we find a way to look past those things and instead see the good coming into our day?  Instead of looking for a conflict, can we strive for connection instead?

 Our marriages can provide us with a peek as to how we tend to handle many intrinsically important things in our hearts and lives: our fears, our anxieties, our insecurities, and our hopes. Each of these words touches a special place rooting from deep within us, and we need to consciously surrender each of those to the God of the universe.  This will reap blessings in both our spiritual lives as well as within our family relationships.

 Do you ever settle for the bare minimum?  I know that I do.  It feels like too much work or too much energy to go “the extra mile” - I will just settle for less.  Let’s just take eating for an example: is it easier to throw a frozen meal in the microwave or to make a homemade pizza?  Which takes more time and effort?  The answer is obvious.  But do we do the same thing in our worship?  Now that’s a dangerous habit to be okay with settling for less in your spiritual nutrition!  Read more to explore this idea.

Sometimes we put expectations on ourselves that may actually in fact end up discouraging us.  We demand perfection of ourselves or we give up when we can’t find a regular way to find time with God.  Don’t let yourself fall into that trap; look for ways to keep strengthening that relationship with your Heavenly Father.

What do you go into church expecting?  Are you just waiting to be blown away each Sunday morning with new revelations and to be entertained?  Or do you cherish the rituals that speak to you deeply in your soul?  Take a few minutes to evaluate your mindset when you come to the house of God to worship.

God has plans for your day: how do you feel about that?  What are you going to do with the next 24 hours that He gives you?  How are you going to look at it?  What attitude will you have as the day begins?  We all look regularly into our planners and calendars and sometimes see things that may not be our heart’s desire.  What do we do with that as we step forward?

 What brings back memories to us?  What makes us remember something that happened to us?  Sometimes it’s music or a scent or perhaps a taste.  God uses things that are familiar to bring us back to us His story His life told while He was here on earth, particularly the ending of His story.  Come walk the familiar road leading to “doing this in remembrance of Me”.

 We all struggle sometimes with allowing the clutter in our minds and lives to take away from the true intent and purpose of significant moments in our lives.  Take a few moments to think about your heart and thoughts as you approach the communion table and evaluate whether your mind is on earthly things or on heavenly things as you take those steps.

 Food ironically consumes much of our energy and also occupies many of our thoughts throughout our lives.  Maybe we are the teenager who is ALWAYS hungry, or maybe we are the mom trying to fill that teenager’s empty leg.  Maybe we have to avoid certain foods due to allergies, or maybe we are the dad taking deep breaths as we deal with a toddler who is currently subsisting entirely on chicken nuggets and bananas.  Perhaps we have a struggle in our relationship with food - we don’t eat enough or we eat too much.  Whatever role food plays in your life, try to remember that God created us to incorporate our eating with fellowship with others.  Come and be conscious of how we use our mouths - both for chewing and savoring, as well as for encouraging and tearing down others.

Lauren Daigle has a song that begins like this:

I keep fighting voices in my mind that say I'm not enough

Every single lie that tells me I will never measure up

Am I more than just the sum of every high and every low?

Remind me once again just who I am because I need to know

Come explore the contrast between the lies you hear and the power of the truth about where your value lies and who you really are!

Every day inevitably holds “stuff” that you don’t want.  How you react to that “stuff” tells a lot about your character.  See how the author’s petulant soul is reflected in a moment of summer fun.  Then see how you can learn from that instance and why it matters.

Being real can be a challenge sometimes.  It can be tough to learn to balance our rose-tinted glasses on our face when life throws us curveballs.  And should we really even be wearing those glasses in the first place?  God calls us to follow Him with every fiber of our being, and in spite of our mood swings or personalities, He wants us to radiate the truths of His Gospel to the world around us.  How are you doing with living out what you claim to believe?

 Being real can be a challenge sometimes.  It can be tough to learn to balance our rose-tinted glasses on our face when life throws us curveballs.  And should we really even be wearing those glasses in the first place?  God calls us to follow Him with every fiber of our being, and in spite of our mood swings or personalities, He wants us to radiate the truths of His Gospel to the world around us.  How are you doing with living out what you claim to believe?

Wrestling with the big questions of our faith is essential.  Floating along on the surface of Christianity results in trite answers, and this does not encourage others to want to believe in this worldview.  To be honest, you shouldn’t settle for it either as meaning and understanding are essential when analyzing one’s beliefs.  Spend a few minutes wrestling with one of the big ones today as you read.

Do we let God’s grace meet us anywhere?  Perhaps we don’t want to “waste it” by pestering God with our ordinary everyday frustrations.  The incredible thing is that we have a God who can bring calm and sanity and clarity to each and every aspect of our lives, in all the things that matter to us.  Don’t be afraid to ask Him to bring a cool breeze of resolution into your situation, no matter how minor it may seem.

What Lies Beneath sounds a bit like a horror movie or novel.  Perhaps it is.  But true confession: most of us struggle with that reality in our everyday lives.   On the surface we seem like a pleasant enough person, but just underneath, we are sometimes a volcano bubbling with lava ready to burst.  Fortunately, we can take God’s promises to heart and find a better way to deal with our frustrations: let Him be the boss.

Sometimes imagery can really hammer a point home into our awareness of the world around us.  Earlier today I was ruminating about some accidents that caused minor damage to my home.  It reminded me of a picture I saw accompanying an article on the BBC once of abandoned places that had been entirely taken back over by nature.  Disturbingly, my thoughts also turned toward an episode of a police investigation TV show where a body was recovered in an advanced state of decomposition.  Let’s face it: things on this earth weren’t meant to last forever.  Tish Harrison Warren acknowledges this succinctly at the end of her chapter on brushing teeth: “I am dust polishing dust” (48).